Storage systems, such as solid state drives (SSDs) including NAND flash memory, are commonly used in electronic systems ranging from consumer products to enterprise-level computer systems. The market for SSDs has increased and its acceptance for use by private enterprises or government agencies to store data is becoming more widespread. Some SSDs may utilize a portion of random access memory (RAM) on a connected host device that is dedicated for control by the SSD, referred to herein as a host memory buffer (HMB). An SSD, using the HMB on a connected host device, can often improve its performance and responsiveness. The improved performance and responsiveness of the SSD storage may, however, come at the price of dragging down total system performance. For example, heavy use of the HMB on the host by the SSD may cause host performance or power issues on the host due to contentions on the data bus, such as a PCIe bus, or other host/device shared resources.